is elsewhere in contemporary Western society. This translates into ageist 

discourses in many forms that provide the principal framework people uti-

lize to interpret the experience of aging and to enact their age identity. This 

was confirmed by the narratives and stories the participants in the study 

told. It also became evident in their enactment of age that age identity cannot 

easily be separated from their other identities; age is often interwoven with 

gender, ethnicity and social class.

Age and Second Language Acquisition: What We 
Have Learned

I now return to the research questions that provided the initial impulse 

for this study and discuss what was learned.

•  How is age coconstructed in the EFL classroom context and in the per-

sonal narratives of adult language learners?

The data generated by interviews, classroom observations and the audio-

taped narrative accounts of the participants in the study contributed to a 

better understanding of how age is constructed by English language learners 

in Mexico. It became clear in their narratives and in their interaction with 

the teacher and classmates that these language students positioned them-

selves and were positioned by others in the three general categories of older, 

‘middle’ (or merely ‘adult’) and young adults. This is noteworthy because 

there were no disputed cases, suggesting that many tacit cultural discourses 

are at play. Not surprisingly, these three age categories bear only a tenuous 

relationship to chronological age. Other factors were seen to carry more 

weight. Although the selection of participants included someone from each 

‘decade’, the way they positioned themselves in the three general categories 

fell, coincidentally, along gender lines. The older participants were both men 

and the midlife adults were all women. The only young adult was male.

It was also interesting to note that Berta, for instance, is closer in chron-

ological age to both Hector and Felix than to any of the ‘middle’ adult par-

ticipants, yet she is unequivocally positioned as a ‘middle’ adult. This is 

likely to change once she stops working, for what emerged in the study is 

that one of the significant factors in determining the boundary between 

‘middle’ and later adulthood among these participants is retirement from 

the work force. At the other end of the spectrum, the divide between young 

and ‘middle’ adulthood seems to revolve around the issue of responsibility. 

Young adults, specifically university students such as David, are perceived 

as being largely free of the economic and emotional responsibilities that 

family and work entail.

An unexpected finding was the discovery that ‘middle’ adulthood is at 

present an undefined category in Mexico, distinguishable only by the 

Final Ref lec t ions  153